Hobbyists have long desired aquatic scenery in aquariums as a desired effect for many years. This is to create a more natural environment for fish and tank inhabitants. However, aquatic scenery is extremely difficult to set-up and maintain. Plants are utilized in aquariums to accomplish a variety of functions. They provide a natural habitat for the fish, and, in addition, provide a means of protecting smaller fish in the aquarium from the larger fishes. The plants can utilize waste materials from fish and other animal life in the aquarium and in return provide oxygen and food for fish and the other organisms.
Although it has been long recognized that the presence of plants is a crucial aspect of any quality aquarium operation, the planting of an aquarium has heretofore been a very cumbersome and difficult task to carry out. Traditionally, aquariums have been planted by carefully covering the individual roots and lower stems of rooted plants. With non-rooted plants, even this approach has been of limited efficiency since, due to the absence of roots, the plants become easily loosened from the substrate, such as gravel and sand, and float to the aquarium surface.
It has been suggested that the best way in which both non-rooted and rooted plants may be securely planted is to weigh down the lower ends of the plants with small rocks or by wrapping lead strips to their stems. This is obviously cumbersome, inconvenient, and in the case of lead strips, toxic. Heretofore, lead strips have been commonly used due to the absence of satisfactory available alternatives.
A few rather complicated plant-holding devices do exist, but these devices do not fulfill the requirements of a live aquarium. U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,982, issued Jan. 5, 1999 to Wechsler, allows a variety of aquarium scenery to be secured to the bottom of an aquarium. However, this unit is expensive to manufacture and does not allow the use of an underground filter system that is widely used in the bottom of modern aquariums. An underground filter system pulls water through the underground filter through a lift tube and a water pump. Thus if the plant holding device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,982 is placed on top of a underground filter system then an undesirable depth of substrate, such as rock or sand, has to be used to cover over both devices, which would render the underground filter system useless.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,562,952, issued Feb. 16, 1971 to Bramante, is yet another device to hold aquarium scenery in place. As with U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,982, this device would seriously compromise the underground filter system which would require water to be pulled through the substrate and filtered. The base members of each variation of this device are flat, which blocks the flow of water. Also, there is too much substrate utilized to provide for the successful operation of an underground filter.
There have been other anchoring devices that have been patented, which include: U.S. Pat. No. 249,879, issued Oct. 10, 1978 to Willinger; U.S. Pat. No. 715,571, issued Dec. 9, 1902 to Gillinder; U.S. Pat. No. 2,155,811, issued Apr. 25, 1939; U.S. Pat. No. 2,486,932, issued Nov. 1, 1949 to Elliott; U.S. Pat. No. 2,639,552, issued May 26, 1953 to Tredup; U.S. Pat. No. 3,245,175, issued Apr. 12, 1966 to Klingberg; U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,743, issued Jan. 29, 1980 to Willinger; U.S. Pat. No. 4,340,625, issued Jul. 20, 1982 to Willinger; U.S. Pat. No. 5,257,596, issued Nov. 2, 1993 to Jones; and U.K. Pat. No. 2,021,371, issued May 30, 1978 to Willinger. These are only remotely similar to the present invention in that these devices vary from using rubber bands to secure plants to their devices, coiled springs to hold plant stems, and a flower pot plant holder.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.
In one aspect of this invention, a plant anchor for securing a plant is disclosed. The plant anchor includes a base member and at least one support portion located within the base member and each support portion includes at least one opening for frictionally securing a plant.
In another aspect of this invention, a plant anchor for securing a plant is disclosed. This plant anchor includes a base member having a top portion having at least one support portion having an opening for frictionally securing a plant and downwardly extending sidewall, a middle portion having an upper flange portion and a lower flange portion, and a bottom portion with upwardly extending sidewall wherein said downwardly extending sidewall of said top portion removedly engages said upper flange of said middle portion and said lower flange portion of said middle portion removedly engages said upperwardly extending sidewall of said bottom portion, and at least one support portion located within said base member and each said support portion includes at least one opening for frictionally securing a plant.
In yet another aspect of this invention, a method for frictionally securing at least one plant is disclosed. The method includes securing the plant in at least one support portion located within a base member, having a top and bottom, with a plurality of legs attached to the bottom of the base member to allow use of a water filter without obstruction of water flow.